Top Posts

From the HWFC Constitution:

"where faculty are committed to teaching and serving students; where enthusiasm and morale are high; and where faculty professionalism and dedication find full expression, working in harmony with students, staff, and administration to fulfill the mission of the college"

Archives

Blog Stats

Think, Know, Prove is an occasional Saturday feature, where a topic with both mystery and importance is posted for community discussion. The title is a shortened version of the Investigative Mantra from All the President’s Men: What do we think, what do we know, what can we prove? and everything from wild speculation to resource referencing fact is welcome here.

Here’s one for your thinker. It’s going to be a bit scattered and jumbled. I don’t mean it to be a carefully developed argument, but rather something more like a journal entry than an essay. Still, I hope you’ll bear with me while I think out loud. I don’t have any answers to any of the problems that I raise here, even if I make it sound like I do at points in what follows, and I am genuinely at a loss regarding all of it. So, let us count the ways that Chicago is #1, shall we? And maybe play a game of connect the dots…

Then perhaps someone of importance would become aware that about 1 in 5 male youth in the city are dropouts by one study, and one in 10 females. Suspensions have been connected to dropout rates in all kinds of research (as here–one among many, chosen for its clarity and brevity). And that’s without even considering race and poverty. And that’s after 15+ years of reform! What’s worse is that the life prospects for these kids–and they are kids, don’t forget that–only get worse from there. Think about that.

Take 300 kids, split evenly between male and female. Then take 30 of the boys and 15 of the girls and march them off a cliff. Make everyone in the country watch it. Would it be accepted with a shrug? Multiply that by a million. Would that be accepted with a shrug? It already is. Year after year after year.

Add in race and poverty, and it’s clear that within the city, the dropout rates are wildly divergent from one neighborhood to another (over 30% in some neighborhoods listed in a chart from 2007–certainly higher in other parts of the city over 60+% in North Lawndale, for example, according to what I hear from some educators I know). Look at the dropout rate column in the chart. In particular, look at the amount of variation in the city compared to the variation in the other counties.

Assuming that dropout rates are a proxy for institutional meeting of the educational needs of the population served, we would seem to be at the top of the list of worst at doing that! Think the chart of schools with the highest drop out rates would match up with the chart on poverty and violence put together by Steve Bogira for The Reader? And do you think the schools with the lowest drop out rates would be found in the areas with the least poverty and violence? I do.

It’s not news that Chicago is a painfully segregated city–racially, ethnically, socio-economically. Strict segregation has been the de facto ‘solution’ to the city’s challenges for going on a hundred years now and like most institutionally imposed or supported solutions the segregation philosophy and its associated policies have done more to perpetuate and exacerbate problems they were intended to eradicate than to solve any of them.

My guess is that the civic violence and the associated malign neglect perpetrated and perpetuated on huge swaths of Chicago’s population inevitably leads to the (completely rational) inference that aspirational thinking is a form of delusional thinking. “Reforming schools” by introducing new interim assessments and takeover procedures amid such realities is equivalent to destroying a book in the Library of Babel. Yet the reforms keep coming, with ever new targets and leaders and gadgets to sell, while the roots of the problem remain unchanged and unaddressed. How does one not get cynical about the whole social enterprise? (If you want to get really pissed off about the social trajectory of the last 30 years, read Michelle Alexander’sThe New Jim Crow. I bet Toni Preckwinckle’s read it. But I digress. Again.)

Getting back to reform, and Chicago’s 15 years of enduring it in our public schools, I offer you as my next exhibit for thought this beautiful graphic from Alvin Bisarya’s May Board report on Early College Initiatives (it was also part of his DWFDW presentation):

Check out that first and second bubble. For me, that is the hardest one to believe. Every time I see it, I can hardly believe that it isn’t a national scandal. I also can’t believe that if we were somehow able to take away all those initiatives and all that administrative shuffle and all those deals and promises and political ladder climbing and all of their effects, that it would be any worse. It seems that after 15 years of it, all those very important people over there have been an elaborate clown show.

I mean look at how many CPS students graduated as college-ready in three subjects after graduating from what amounts to 13 years of state mandated college preparation! Even if we were to count all of the other students who enrolled in colleges other than CCC as being college ready (which certainly they weren’t), it would still be an absurdly low number. It would be comical if it weren’t so criminal. It is a fundamental, civic, moral failure of gigantic proportion, and it is ongoing.

Three major unions in our city–the police, the fire department, and the teachers are all without contracts at the moment, representing a little over 60,000 Chicagoans. The police and teachers especially, have been subjected to years and years of leadership imposed initiatives which often invoke, as their justification, some kind of professional failure or moral flaw or both on the part of the people who carried out the previous plans (i.e., cops and teachers).

Teachers, who make up more than half of the 60,000, have been under attack for years now for their failure to fix what decades of policy and widespread apathy/tacit acceptance hath wrought. And higher ed is not immune. Reinvention. 7%. Dropping enrollment. These were our reformers’ pitchforks and torches. Then, after a while, when, one might speculate, their eyes are finally adjusting to the realities of our world,discoveries are made (e.g., turns out that almost all of the enrollment drop is due to drops in Adult Education (i.e. G.E.D. programs) and credit enrollment has been growing steadily for years, up 35% or so over the last five. Just like we said way back when–that their big finding about enrollment at the city colleges dropping, while factually true, was ultimately misleading since credit, which is how most non-insiders interpret “city colleges enrollment,” was booming. Ahem.)

It. Makes. Me. Crazy.

(sigh).

Yesterday, I was poking around on YouTube looking for some video clips to use in my logic class so my students could practice recognizing and paraphrasing arguments. A former student dropped in and mentioned Newsroom as a potential source of some good stuff (hence the link in the first paragraph; he thought I should use this one). While looking through someofthose, I came across a couple of George Carlin clips (this was a great interview, I thought). Clips like this (warning–NSFW language–use headphones):

I watched it, laughed (again), and then watched this one on “the illusion of freedom” and this one on education (that first scene is filmed in Chicago!) and then started thinking about Marcuse and the ways his ideas parallel Carlin’s and how that would make an interesting class (something about toleration) and then decided that I need to take a break and get off the computer. So I left and walked to Staples (to get paper–no kidding) and on my way out of the school, I picked up a Reader because I thought I might stop at America’s Dog (I’m working my way through the menu) and opened it up while waiting for the light to change, which is when I saw the piece on poverty and death (linked above), which got me to thinking about all of the other really big stuff on what is happening all around us and all of the insignificant minor crap (100 copies… really?) that takes up so much of our public and individual energy and attention and time and, even while sitting (as it were) on a perch of relative privilege, standing on the corner of Lake and Wabash, I found it pretty hard to fight off complete demoralization. How much harder must it be for our students in the worst of Chicago’s neighborhoods?

If I were a young man growing up in the city of Chicago, I would find it hard to imagine that anyone disagrees with George Carlin. It does not take a huge leap of imagination, then, to figure out why some of our city’s kids don’t exactly live for tomorrow.

This cannot go on. I am embarrassed to be complaining about the number of copies I’m allowed while kids are dying. And, at the same time it all seems of a piece to me. I don’t understand it and can’t make sense of it. Not any of it. Especially not all the blood in our streets. If my math is right, more Americans have died in the streets of Chicago over the last four years than in eleven years of fighting a war in Afghanistan. Over the same ten year period, 5000 Chicagoans have died violently. Granted, many, many, many more people have died over there than those 2000 Americans, but still–I do not know how to make sense of any of it. Our murder rate is 4x that of New York and triple that of L.A. And nobody is scared in my neighborhood. But they are hopping mad about the police station getting closed down and moved. Apparently there have been a rash of catalytic converter and Honda Fit tire thefts up here. People are hopping mad. One wonders what they would be like if it were their children’s futures being stolen. There are days that I love this city; and there are many when I can barely stand another minute.

4 thoughts on “Think, Know, Prove: Chicago is #1”

PhiloDave,
I’ve finally had time to read the post and some of the links and watch the Carlin video. What can I say?
First, great and timely post. Your research is great; but not to criticize the facts, I believe we, as a society, don’t need the data to see the writing on the wall. I think we see it and just ignore it, as stated in the links, ’cause it ain’t the gang graffiti in my neighborhood.
Second, I feel your pain. I understand what you mean. Been there. Done that. There are days I get myself all worked up and demoralized about the same issues. Talking with colleagues helps. That includes you.
The problem is cataclysmic, and as the articles state, we, society at large, have quarantined the problem so it doesn’t shake the earth under our homes and neighborhoods. We bury it, brush it off, and hypocritically say we want to do something about it. Our actions are missing and our words are hallow.

Money will not solve this problem; of that I am convinced. I learned that from reading a book and realizing that the more money you throw at a problem, the bigger it gets. It’s kinda like getting a raise and spending beyond your means because you think you just won the lottery. More money, more problems. (Interestingly enough, there are a bunch of lottery winners that have filed for bankruptcy.)

Words have not done a thing. Talk is cheap. Our politicians and administrators of education have perverted the art form of rhetoric to the point that no one really listens anymore. It’s all a joke. Seriously. What’s going to happen with the info that was presented at FDW? I don’t want long term goals, I want immediate results (but not the kind that limit my copy count.)

Reform? Ha! Reinvention? Double-ha! What do we have to show for after saying that we need a better educational system? Has anything really improved over the past 20, 30, 40 years due to talk? I don’t think so. If anypeep wants to argue that there have been positives, I will not disagree. I’ll only point out that the negatives will outweigh the positives by a considerable margin. (For example, Wellness Centers across the Distric: Good. Lack of copies, security gates, increase in remedial students, expensive textbooks, change of colors, branding, reduced budgets across the city/state/ country, local increase in CPS school hours with no compensation for teachers, failing schools: Bad/Disgusting/Shameful.)

Data. Unfortunately a lot of data (and research) fall under the category of words. We’ve seen the data. Politicians and administrators have used the data to tell us what we need to do. No Child Left Behind is the prime example of what I mean. George Bush used words and data to do what? Nothing. We would have been better off not reading his lips.

Action? There has been no sound action to compliment all the words. Perhaps because the words have been shallow, even hollow. The little action that has taken place? As the articles state, to keep us segregated. To keep the good schools in high-income neighborhoods, and as Carlin states, to keep us under control. What sort of action is taking place? That which money can buy to keep the low class from mixing with the high class. (Ever try joining a golf club? Pay to play. What to live in a nice neighborhood? Afford the taxes. Want to be a Goldman Sachs Scholar? Show me the money!)

So what shall we do? I don’t know what any of you want or need to do, so I’ll put some advice on the table and take it from there:
Have Love, Hope and Faith.

Love what you do as an educator. I mean, as a true teacher who is embedded in a classroom with 35 or so students. Do what is best for your students and you. Make good use of these precious 16 weeks, right down to the last minute of every class session. Think critically and teach your students to do the same, regardless of the subject matter. In fact, let the subject matter be secondary to this goal.

Hope that your students continue to think critically after they’ve left your classroom. Hope that your words and actions will make a difference. Hope that no matter how many empty words you hear from politicos and admins, you will never let them pollute your love of education.

Have Faith that good will come from your dedication to this profession and your students. Have Faith that the system, while corrupt now, will one day come to change for the better because you did not falter from your mission as a true educator. Have faith that there are other educators, as passionate and as active as you who see teaching as a privilege and honestly care about all the current injustices. Have faith that they too, are taking action and not just saying so.

BTW: In an effort to conclude what remains of our ongoing conversation over this winter break, I spent some time this evening browsing through the past semester’s posts on the Lounge. (Note: To those of you who have not registered for follow-up comments to this “TKP: Chicago is #1” post and will therefore not read this reminder, you can refresh your memories as to that ongoing conversation by looking under “Faculty Council Corner” in the Dec. 2011 archives.)

I notice that there aren’t many replies here….

I’ll be over at Dec. 2011 soon so until I arrive, you can catch me there if you need to. Given this TKP post, I strongly recommend Don Delillo’s White Noise or Rudyard Kipling’s Kim.

Both novels are love stories, really, or stories about acts of love. You can get stuck on how the novels construct personal agency, but it might be better to think about species specific universals (if not consent versus coercion) and the sheer mystery of being. I don’t mean the “meaninglessness” or “pastiche/hybridity” of being. I mean mystery as in the standing about amazed. Ultimately, the characters in the novels act, then act again, as if ____ (but you’ll need to fill in that blank).

It’s just that Delillo is so “groovy” and Kipling is so anathema for the hip postmodern/post-colonial kids I thought I had better pop back and post these few sentences so as to “clear a space” for your reading. In fact, you might find it very productive to perform a kind of parallel reading for both novels: let the usual suspects in your head have their usual say as they interrogate the text, but then try to set that aside (if you can). Acts of love in novels by Delillo and Kipling?